Enrolment of new students in the UVic-UCC Bachelor’s degrees for academic year 2021-2022 is up 16%

The number of new students enrolled in the official degree programmes at the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC) for academic year 2021-2022 has risen 16% compared to the previous year, with an increase of the number of students enrolled of 3,739. By programmes, the increase in the number of new students in the UVic-UCC’s Bachelor’s programmes is 21%, and they cover 84% of the spots available for bachelor’s programmes via pre-enrolment, 8 points more than last academic year.. In lifelong learning, the official master’s programmes have 9% more new students, while in the professional campus, the Advanced Vocational Education Programmes (CFGS) remain steady at 145 new students.

Overall, continuing the upward trend from recent years, this academic year 2021-2022 the number of students at the university increased 9%, leading it to surpass 10,000 students for the first time, with the specific figure of 10,821. These outstanding results can be partly explained by the fact that the Elisava Design and Engineering Faculty joined the federation. Not counting Elisava, the UVic-UCC has grown 7% in new enrolments and 6% in overall enrolment. By type of degree, the overall enrolment at the UVic-UCC this academic year is distributed as follows: 5,229 people enrolled in UVic bachelor’s degree programmes; 1,975 in UManresa bachelor’s degrees; 488 students in the UMedicina bachelor’s degree; 302 in the Elisava bachelor’s degrees; 467 in the UVic-UCC master’s degree programmes; 260 in the UVic-UCC doctoral programmes; 1,821 in the bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes at affiliated centres; and 279 in the UVic-UCC’s CFGS programmes.

The enrolment figures, along with the presentation of the UVic-UCC’s main strategic projects for this academic year, were shared at the press conference-luncheon held this Tuesday at noon in the Auditorium of the UVic-UCC Faculty of Medicine at Can Baumann in Vic. The participants in the event were the rector of the UVic-UCC, Josep Eladi Baños; the managing director of the Fundació Universitària Balmes, Joan Turró; the managing director of the Fundació Universitària del Bages, Valentí Martínez; the managing director of the Fundació d’Estudis Superiors en Ciències de la Salut, Marina Geli; and the managing director of the Fundació Privada Elisava Escola Universitària, Javier Peña.

A steady increase over time

The rector of the UVic-UCC is very pleased with the university’s enrolment results this academic year. He says that they are a sign of the outstanding work being done to attract new students and earn the loyalty of existing ones. ‘We are very pleased to have surpassed the figure of 10,000 students, which makes us a significant sized-university in the Catalan system. It is the outcome of steady growth over time and is not just a circumstantial increase’, he said. The rector also noted that ‘the occupancy level of the number of spots available and the large number of students applying to UVic-UCC as their first choice is significant. It shows the solidity of our university project’.

The managing director of the Fundació Universitària Balmes, Joan Turró, mentioned that the experience and lessons learned from the pandemic will be extremely useful this academic year, as they actually reinforced many areas, such as teaching and digitalisation. He also noted that the enrolment this year shows that the university is gaining solidity and has reached a significant size and clout within the Catalan university system. In this arena, Turró said that the most notable feature is the increase in enrolment in university master’s programmes, which are heavily geared to either professional training or research, which ‘boosts the prestige that the UVic-UCC is gaining in the field of research and knowledge transfer, in addition to teaching’.

Valentí Martínez, the managing director of the Fundació Universitària del Bages, stated that ‘being able to participate in the negotiations for the future programme contract is extremely important. It has enabled us to lower tuition, allocate more resources to research and undertake multiyear investments beyond our own resources’. According to Martínez, ‘it also stands as recognition of the role that the university plays in the territorial rebalancing of the entire country’.

Marina Geli, the managing director of the Fundació d’Estudis Superiors en Ciències de la Salut, stressed the increased enrolment in the Bachelor’s in Medicine, which means that ‘our Faculty of Medicine is viewed as a trustworthy faculty’. In this sense, Geli added that ‘we want to maintain current figures: 488 students enrolled from the first to the fifth year is a very positive figure, above our initial expectations’.

Finally, in reference to Elisava joining the federation, Javier Peña, the managing director of the Fundació Privada Elisava Escola de Disseny, said that ‘becoming a faculty is a shift in scale for us. We have gone from being an affiliated centre to being part of the university’. He also recalled that reaching 1,100 bachelor’s degree students this academic year, ‘with the best enrolment of new students ever in the Design degree, confirms to us that this is a real project with a bright future’.

Good response at all centres

At the UVic, the number of new students enrolled this academic year is 1,402, which is 3% more than last year. The increase in the number of total students enrolled at the UVic campus this year is 5%, reaching a total of 5,229 students. The UVic was chosen by many students, as three-quarters of the enrolled new students listed it as their first choice. In fact, 87% of the spots at the UVic are filled, two points more than last year. By centres, the Faculty of Education, Translation, Sports and Psychology (FETEP) and the Faculty of Sciences and Technology (FCT) have experienced the steepest growth in new enrolments, both with a more than 30% increase compared to last year.

UManresa has enrolled a total of 1,219 individuals in its official degree programmes (bachelor’s, university master’s and Advanced Vocational Education Programmes) this academic year, a figure that makes for a 7.7% increase in the number of students on campus compared to last academic year. This growth is the outcome of rather full cohorts in the previous years, which were coupled with the annual increase of 17.5% in the number of new students. The Faculty of Health Sciences of Manresa has experienced steep growth. The Podiatry programme enrolled 90% more new students than last year thanks to the addition of the hybrid modality, which has been crucial in attracting new students.

In the Faculty of Medicine, this year, when the fifth year of the bachelor’s in Medicine is being held for the first time, there are 157 new students enrolled, and the programme currently has a total of 488 students enrolled. The enrolment in the first year rose 6.7% compared to academic year 2020-2021 and has a total of 142 students. The broad acceptance of this centre is clear based on the number of applicants who listed its bachelor’s in Medicine as their first choice, 110 students this year, and in the total number of applicants, 1,103 students (compared to 700 last year). The Faculty of Medicine has boosted its cut-off mark to 12.39, up from 12.19 last year.

At Elisava, this year 302 new students enrolled in the bachelor’s in Design and Innovation and 97 students in the bachelor’s in Industrial Design Engineering. A total of 302 students listed Elisava as their first choice on their application in the first round of assignments in June: 160 for the bachelor’s in Design and 92 for the bachelor’s in Industrial Design Engineering. Nonetheless, a total of 692 applicants chose Elisava degrees as one of their eight preferences.

Strategic projects to consolidate the UVic-UCC

At the end of the event where the enrolment figures were presented, the most important strategic projects of the UVic-UCC and each federated centre were presented. Joan Turró, managing director of the FUBalmes, explained that the UVic-UCC is entering a new era in its federation with the forthcoming creation of two legally independent research centres: the Centre Tecnològic  BETA in the field of the circular bioeconomy and the Institut de Recerca i Innovació en Salut de la Catalunya Centra (IRIS-CC) in the field of health. He also mentioned the renewal of the programme contract, which is expected to be signed this academic year, the first one to be negotiated on the federation level.

Regarding the UVic projects, Turró highlighted the university’s involvement and participation in the strategic projects of the entrepreneurship agency Creacció in Osona in the fields of health, digital technologies, mobility, the circular bioeconomy and vulnerable groups. In turn, Valentí Martínez, the managing director of the FUBages, stated that one of UManresa’s priorities is to reorganise its spaces with the goal of having the different buildings on campus specialise in order to make their fields of expertise, namely Education, Business and Health Sciences, more visible. Within this endeavour, a new building is under construction which will house the teaching and services in the field of Education (FUB4).

Marina Geli, the managing director of the FESS, noted that this is the first academic year in the internationalisation of the students in the Faculty of Medicine and the implementation of its own Student Support Programme (Programa de Suport a l’Estudiant, PSE). Javier Peña, the managing director of the Fundació Privada Elisava Escola de Disseny, presented the teaching and research project from what is now the UVic-UCC’s Faculty of Design and Engineering. He also explained that this academic year efforts are underway to secure a new building by 2024-25, which will allow the school to go from 11,000 m² to 15,000 m² in the former Mercedes building, which will also house the UVic-UCC’s new headquarters in Barcelona.